


I'd Sorta Like To Cross The Rubicon And Battle For It

by prouvairablehulk



Series: sidere mens eadem mutato [2]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Jax doesn't mean to cause all this trouble, Multi, The USyd AU got bigger, its all Mick's fault really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 18:26:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7449571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prouvairablehulk/pseuds/prouvairablehulk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or, five times somebody got punched because of Jefferson Jackson and one time he did the punching.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'd Sorta Like To Cross The Rubicon And Battle For It

**Author's Note:**

> I know none of them are Classicists, but let me have this joke.

i. 

The reason Jax is drinking is because his advisor is insane.

He’d been warned that the man was notoriously abrupt, cautioned that he had been nicknamed “Captain Cold” for a reason, but nothing had prepared him for the truth of it. Professor Snart (“call me Len”) seemed quite nice, to be honest. He’d provided coffee and tiny baked alaskas at the meeting, asked Jax how his injury was healing up, responded to Jax’s comment about the desserts with a proud smile and an acknowledgment that his husband had made them (Jax feels, in retrospect, that he should have been more concerned about the “Mick likes anything with a blowtorch in the recipe” comment). He’d been excited by Jax’s thesis, had some interesting suggestions, and really seemed to love his work. 

Then one of the other professors stuck his head in to Len’s office. Jax didn’t recognize him at first, but as soon as he stepped into the room something clicked in Jax’s head and he was staring at Professor Druce, the soon to be retired head of department. Jax had been recruited by his replacement, Rip Hunter, who was more of a historiographer than anything else. Druce made an offhand comment about Jax that might have, under a certain light with some heavy bias goggles on, not been derogatory. Len lays one on him with the emphasis of a street brawler but the technique of a high-caliber boxer and grins without humor as Druce stumbles backwards out the door to Len’s office.

“Thanks.” Len says. “I’ve been looking for an excuse to do that.”

Someone slides into the seat on his left, and raises an eyebrow at the bottle of Jack Jax is drinking his way through. His new skeptic is a pretty girl with brown doe eyes and dark hair. At her shoulder is a handsome young man with expressive hands and an open face that Jax can already tell are gonna mean trouble for his heart.

“My advisor’s insane.” Says Jax, by means of explanation.

“Oh, thank god.” Says Jesse, because of course the girl is Jesse.

“We thought we were the only ones.” Says Wally, and motions for two more glasses.

ii. 

“Not to be racist, but -” starts the idiot in his philosophy class, outside the seminar room after Jax has spent an hour grumpily disagreeing with the trust funds.

The guy’s head literally ricochets off the wall and back into Lisa’s knuckles. Jax can’t help but applaud.

iii.

Look, Jax has exams all next week, so he can be forgiven for utilizing Fisher Library’s 24 hour opening, right? It just means he stumbles into Mick’s office at 9am with a coffee and a muffin from the cafe in the new Law building in yesterday’s clothes. Mick takes one look at him, rolls his eyes, and pulls a sweater out of nowhere.

It’s a pullover in a deep charcoal grey and it’s the softest thing Jax has ever worn, even if he has to turn up the sleeves a couple of times and the shoulders are too wide. Rip says something about Jax and Mick’s sweater and not going home that it takes Jax’s sleep-deprived brain a few seconds to register as a rather heavy-handed innuendo and by that point Mick’s already taken a swing.

When Jax leaves at 10:30 with instructions to sleep and a key to Len and Mick’s place because it’s closer than his flat, Rip is still sitting at the counter in the kitchen with a bag of frozen peas pressed against his nose.

iv.

Jax learns fairly quickly that he is not the first person Len and Mick have unofficially adopted, nor is he the last. As a result, he has inherited the worlds most dysfunctional group of older siblings ever. If Jax dies of clinical embarrassment, it will be their fault. At the moment, however, he’s pretty sure he’s going to die of the dude he just beat at pool beating the hell out of him. This is what he gays for letting Shawna talk him in to helping her hustle someone.  
And suddenly the guy isn’t crowding into Jax’s space anymore, and instead Mark Mardon is at his right shoulder and asking if that asshole had hurt him at all. 

Jax supposes he should be upset that Mark got them kicked out of the bar, but as the whole gang of them pile into a 7/11 for Slurpees at an unholy hour he can’t help but feel blessed to have been included in this hot mess of hot people that are the unofficial Snart-Rory children.

v.

Hartley Rathaway is an asshole. An attractive asshole with a protective streak like you wouldn’t believe, but an arrogant asshole.

The important thing to understand here is that Jax loves Hartley for precisely this reason, and wouldn’t have it any other way. The unfortunate side effect is that Hartley tends to piss people off and end up putting them in situations like this. “This” is Jax standing between Hartley and the much larger, much stronger guy in the Scots Rugby hoodie who’s presentation Hartley just brutally graded (brutally honestly and for good reason, but nonetheless brutally), hoping that no one’s going to get hit.

He’s on the ground a second later with stars dancing in front of his eyes and a tender spot starting to throb on his jaw. Obviously, the guy decided he could punch his way through to Hartley. Jax winced as Hartley laid into the guy, going for every tender point his smaller frame could reach.

“Leave off my brother, asshole!”

He’d pull Hartley off when he could stand up without feeling sick.

The guy was a rugby player. He could handle it.

\+ 1 time Jax did the punching.

Mardi Gras is Mick and Len’s actual anniversary, so the whole sordid family appears for the parade like its a party just for them. They get there as early as possible and cram themselves against the barricade, laughing and half-drunk already. Len and Mick are content to watch the kids pile to the front, and then take their place in the middle of the scrum once the parade starts. They eat chips and trade faculty gossip while they wait, while Mick smiles like a proud patriarch and Len fusses like only a perpetually overprotective older brother can.

It’s not until they’re traveling home, happy and exhausted and glitter-covered and bead-bedecked, that some asshole decides to make trouble. They’re on the platform at Kings Cross and Jax and Wally are being the same kind of overly affectionate they always are when high on adrenaline, bass beats and the leftover dregs of alcohol, handsy and bright-eyed and nuzzling into Jesse’s neck whenever she turns away from them to make her laugh, trading sunshine kisses between the three of them. The guy tells something that goes straight to Jax’s hindbrain as offensive and Not Okay, and Jax spins around to face him, anger seeping into his bones. Then the asshole spits out a word at Len and Mick, who are behind Jax and Wally and Jesse, Mick curled around Len’s back, happy and content. It’s a word that Jax learned to hate long ago, a word that has no place on a night like this, a night for celebration.

It starts with ‘f’. You can fill in the blanks.

Jax sees red, and doesn’t really remember how he crossed the good ten meters between them to crack the guy across the face. There’s a moment of startled silence across the platform.

“This is all your fault.” Len says to Mick, in the pause. “I don’t know how, but it’s your fault.”

Mick doesn’t seem to care. He’s too busy grinning like an idiot and pulling Jax into a hug.

“That’s my boy.” He says into Jax’s hairline, voice triumphant.


End file.
